The Claim Jumpers

Her eyes fairly danced.

"Oh, what a lovely word!" she cried rapturously. "What does it

mean? Something nice, or I'm sure you wouldn't have said it about me.

Would you?" The eyes suddenly became grave. "Oh, please tell me!" she

begged appealingly.

Bennington was thrown into confusion at this, for he did not know

whether she was serious or not. He could do nothing but stammer and get

red, and think what a ridiculous ass he was making of himself. He might

have considered the help he was getting in that.

"Well, then, you needn't," she conceded, magnanimously, after a moment.

"Only, you ought not to say things about girls that you don't dare tell

them in plain language. If you will say nice things about me, you might

as well say them so I can understand them; only, I do think it's a

little early in our acquaintance."

This cast Bennington still more in perplexity. He had a

pretty-well-defined notion that he was being ridiculed, but concerning

this, just a last grain of doubt remained. She rattled on.

"Well!" said she impatiently, "why don't you say something? Why don't

you take this stick? I don't want it. Men are so stupid!"

That last remark has been made many, many times, and yet it never fails

of its effect, which is at once to invest the speaker with daintiness

indescribable, and to thrust the man addressed into nether inferiority.

Bennington fell to its charm. He took the stake.

"Where does it belong?" he asked.

She pointed silently to a pile of stones. He deposited the stake in its

proper place, and returned to find her seated on the ground, plucking a

handful of the leaves of a little erect herb that grew abundantly in

the hollow. These she rubbed together and held to her face inside the

sunbonnet.

"Who are you, anyway?" asked Bennington abruptly, as he returned.

"D' you ever see this before?" she inquired irrelevantly, looking up

with her eyes as she leaned over the handful. "Good for colds. Makes

your nose feel all funny and prickly."

She turned her hands over and began to drop the leaves one by one.

Bennington caught himself watching her with fascinated interest in

silence. He began to find this one of her most potent charms--the

faculty of translating into a grace so exquisite as almost to realize

the fabled poetry of motion, the least shrug of her shoulders, the

smallest crook of her finger, the slightest toss of her small,

well-balanced head. She looked up.